Stop the Rain
by Libek
Summary: Demyx keeps insisting he has nothing to do with the rain in Never Was; no one ever listens to him.


The rain started on the day he came to the World That Never Was, and the tall, imposing man who had identified himself only as Three paused, then turned and said, "Cute. Very cute." Because he had been found lying face-down in a broken fountain, unconscious, and Three had already guessed at the element he wielded. It only made sense to conclude that the rain had come with him, because of him.

And that much, Medy agreed with.

When he was brought to the Superior and given his new name, his new number, the others with their faces hidden had all admired the rain. "Useful," Six had murmured. "At least he seems to have caught on quickly," Four had allowed. Unspoken but apparent was that none of them had done anything with their elements so soon.

And he was Demyx now, but he tried to tell them then. No one listened. Even though he was new and interesting, they all had more important things to do than listen to him. He knew where his room was, had been told Their Grand Purpose (The Abridged Version), and would soon be given his first assignment. Beyond that, they didn't care -- about much of anything.

A week went by, and it was still raining. Over dinner that evening, Seven spoke to him for the first time ever, his voice a low silvery hiss: "I suppose you find this amusing." Eight slid up beside him in the hallway, all insinuation and glittering eyes: "It's a _riot_, flood the castle." He wasn't the only one who seemed amused, either, but Demyx was sure they still wanted him to make it stop.

And again he tried to tell them, tried to tell them desperately. The only thing that came out was an exhausted whisper of, "But I'm not doing it."

The water _was_ his, he knew that; uncertain chords on the instrument they called a weapon could summon it, make it swell and cascade in time. If Kip could've seen him -- he'd never be as good at the music, and it wouldn't be the same as having a band of his own or anything, and there were times when he felt sort of strange inside, sort of hollow -- _but he could make water dance_.

Even straight from the tap, _it_ listened to him. Buoyed him. Like the water in the fountain, it would never let him drown. Every drop that hit his skin was like a sweet chorus: _I am yours._

If Nobodies could feel, Demyx might have called this love.

But the rain that fell in Never Was didn't love him, didn't even like him. When he tried to tell it to go, it only fell harder, in torrents that flooded the Dark City's streets, like it was trying to drown them all. This rain wasn't his. And it felt wrong.

"It's like it isn't coming from anywhere," he told Three, grabbing him by the arm in a last-ditch effort. "It's like it isn't really water."

Demyx wasn't sure what had possessed him -- maybe he'd thought one of the Higher Numbers would tolerate his insolence just because the man had once dragged him out of a dying world, and that seemed like the sort of thing that created a special bond between two people. But instantly he knew he'd made a terrible mistake. The look on Three's face, briefly stunned and then so flat and cold and innately superior...

Then Three spoke. "Wait. You mean you really can't control it?"

And the next day, everyone knew. The new kid was an idiot who couldn't even master his own element. That rain he'd "called" down? A _mistake_. He couldn't get rid of it. How clumsy, how foolish, how unworthy of the Organization. Whenever he entered a room, the others would fall silent, turn to stare at him, and then begin to whisper. It was so much worse than being ignored.

Demyx retreated into the library just to get away from them, and bumped right into Number Five.

He must have looked a mess. His eyes were wet, the way they shouldn't have been able to be. More than ever, he was aware of how his robes didn't fit him quite right, how the sleeves sagged and bunched in all the wrong places. How very, very much he didn't belong here.

_I'm sorry,_ he wanted to say. But that wasn't what came out at all. Instead there was a river of words, wild and sudden and uncontrolled like a dam had broken somewhere upstream, and he found himself telling Five everything from the beginning. Both beginnings, right down to the way he'd felt when the light had gone out of his brother's half-frozen eyes.

It wasn't that he expected compassion. It wasn't that he expected understanding. Heck, he barely even expected a response. No one else had paid him much attention, and Five was a _giant,_ towering above him even seated, as big and immovable as a mountain. Demyx had never heard him so much as speak before. The whole thing was futile, pointless, and any second now Five would level a stare at him just like Three had and those eyes would bore through him like Mako lasers--

Hyperventilating. But still, Five only gazed down at him.

"There is no earth here for me to call," the man said finally in a low, soft voice that wasn't even slightly what Demyx would've imagined. "No great flows of ice for Vexen, or fire pits for Axel. The moon above is no moon at all, and does not tempt Saix. The very air is a dead thing, so its movements hardly interest Xaldin. None of us can know for certain. Perhaps you should ask Xigbar. But it would not surprise me if the rain weren't real. So little here is." He rose from his chair, shut the book he'd been reading, and turned to leave. "The others will forget in time."

Demyx stared after him with his mouth slightly open. The dam seemed to have been zealously reconstructed, because now his throat was closed up completely and he couldn't even pull himself together enough to nod his head until Five was long gone from the room. But some minutes later, he managed in a very small voice to say, "Thanks for listening." That no one heard it only seemed appropriate.

*

The rain still poured down. Maybe it would never _really_ listen to him the way normal water did. And while the others no longer whispered to one another in his presence, Demyx could tell they weren't going to take him seriously for a very long time -- maybe not ever. Even Five, aside from his words that day, would probably never speak to him again at any length.

But none of that mattered. Water had moved the mountain. That made everything possible.

Someday, hey. He might even risk talking to Number Two, and see if the Superior's right-hand man had anything to say about the rain.

For now Demyx would focus on parting the clouds over Never Was, even if only for a few seconds at a time.


End file.
